


Papa Oscar India

by BuffyRowan



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 08:43:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 2,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1260121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuffyRowan/pseuds/BuffyRowan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of ficlets using the phonetic alphabet as prompts.  Ficlets vary in time, POV, and seriousness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alpha

His new pack was a good one. A bit odd, but still good. Better than the previous pack; those humans had been no better than coyotes, scavengers and cowards, depending on his teeth to do all the work for them. This pack was better, stronger. Almost dog-like, to his mind. He'd thought that the man who'd taken him from that weak pack was Alpha. But Alpha was the injured one, he wouldn't be able to fight to keep his position. Beta did the fighting, and was his rescuer. Alpha female wasn't mated to Alpha, or any of the males in the pack. Not to mention the fact that she tolerated another female to come and go, sniffing at Beta. but this pack was strong, and took care of pack members properly, so he was content.


	2. Bravo

Zoe'd never understood why John had been flubbing the blind date with Angelis. He'd been a smooth operator with her the first time they'd met, never hesitated with his story. It wasn't until she'd thought about it that she realized the genius of his performance that night. A woman who lived in New York City, made headlines as an investigative reporter, and signed up for online dating? A guy that perfect on paper /and/ in person would have set off every serial killer/creepazoid detection instinct she had. But a guy who was perfect in his profile who turned out to have fudged things to get a higher quality of date? Dime a dozen in lower Manhattan alone.


	3. Charlie

The name "Charles" means either "man" or "manly." He'd never thought himself common enough for the first meaning, and had known from very early in elementary school gym classes that he didn't measure up to the second by common standards. So he'd chosen his own name, one that he felt was more fitting. One that suited his position in technology and programming (by results, if not reputation.) A herald always was ahead of things, after all.


	4. Delta

John had walked many long, dark roads since he'd been chosen as Delta. In some ways, he'd changed enough that he didn't think that that young idealist who'd gone into Fort Bragg would recognize him now. But at least these days, thanks to Finch, John could say he was living up to the Delta's motto: de oppressor libber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> translation of latin: to free from oppression or to free the oppressed


	5. Echo

Donnally knew he wasn't chasing a ghost, or an urban legend. Let the doubting assholes in the office make Ahab jokes, he knew he'd track down the Man in the Suit, and he knew he'd make the vigilante face official justice. He wasn't chasing a phantom, he was chasing echoes. He just had to keep still and listen long enough, and he'd be able to track those echoes back to the source.


	6. Foxtrot

He didn't read the comics much anymore. He'd loved "Calvin and Hobbes" and mourned the end of that strip. These days he'd read "Pearls Before Swine" for the terrible puns, and occasionally "Heart of the City" would remind him of Calvin. But after he'd flipped through an anthology as camouflage while tailing a number, he'd been addicted to "Foxtrot." He enjoyed the family and the author's sense of humor. Of course, nowadays when John pictured a young Harold Finch, he looked a lot like Jason, only less obvious about his plans for world domination.


	7. Golf

Fusco didn't even have to ask, he'd seen the reaction before. Every time Wonderboy passed a VW Golf in a certain color, he'd grin, just a little. Fusco'd seen that kind of grin before. Personally, he got it when he looked at bleachers at a high school football field and considered the semiprivate space under them. That grin was the mark of where a guy hit a very specific type of milestone with girls. Of course, considering Wonderboy was 6' 2" and a Golf's not one of your more spacious vehicles, Fusco also figured that both parties involved back then had to have been fairly flexible. 

Just sayin.


	8. Hotel

It snuck up on John. Between years in the army and years on the street, he didn't tend to place a lot of value on possessions. The first time she'd seen it, Jessica had told him his little apartment off-base seemed more like an extended-stay hotel suite than a home. Then Harold had gifted him with a beautiful apartment, and one day he looked around and it looked like someone's home. There were several hand-knitted throws around that he'd picked up at craft bazaars and charity sales. His yoga mat sat in front of the windows, next to an exercise bike and a big dog pillow for Bear. He'd even managed to not kill the aloe plant the sweet old lady from the first floor had brought up for him the first week after he'd moved in. He'd made himself a real home.


	9. India

So Shaw had gone through a brief--brief!--period where she read Regency romance novels. When she was fourteen. No matter how questionable she found her younger self's taste in reading material, it did give her a good frame of reference for where she was (figuratively) these days. She was in India. According to those novels, a younger son or daughter who'd screwed up a bit would get shipped off to India for a few years, kind of like an adult's version of a time out. Then they'd come back to London, richer in experience (and possibly money.)

Shit had gone down, and Shaw was currently on the outs with her former government employers. But she'd do the community service gig with John and Finch. And when some time had passed, she'd be pulled back into "proper society" again. She hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know that Shaw works with Finch and Reese in season 3. Just my muse's take on why she'd join the Scooby Squad.


	10. Juliet

Jessica was not his Juliet, and he was no Romeo. They hadn't rushed into things drunk on young love, convinced of the righteousness of their relationship. With the cushion of years gone by, John could accept that. He could remember her with love, his Dulcinea. An ideal he held up against all other women for comparison, a dream that could make him tilt at windmills. But ultimately, an ideal better left high up on her pedestal, because the fall to reality would only have shattered her.


	11. Kilo

The Machine made an adjustment to its projections. Asset: John Reese was more effective working with Admin than their respective psych profiles had suggested. As the analysis from the one thousandth intervention with a positive outcome was formulated, the Machine tweaked search parameters, attempting to account for the factors most commonly encountered when working the irrelevant list. This process was much more efficient without the nightly memory wipes, according to the Machine's analysis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this was a tough prompt. However, kilo is a prefix in the metric system that denotes multiplied by 1000. So, the 1000th case.


	12. Lima

Joss was revisiting the ridiculous theory one of the rookies had tossed out, that the Man in the Suit was actually some kind of cyborg or something a la Terminator. Because John had plowed through two heaping servings of lima beans while they'd been sitting in this diner doing surveillance. And not good looking, delicious smelling lima beans like her Auntie Leeya used to make, either. No, these were anemic, puke-green beans that smelled like old socks and paprika. Either the man wasn't human, or he'd spent longer than just the years she knew about in the army eating institutional slop. Watching him hail the waitress for another order of beans and a refill of the bitter, oily black coffee they served at this place, Joss was leaning towards the inhuman theory. Even army grunts with an entire bottle of season salt wouldn't go for thirds of that crap.


	13. Mike

Harold wouldn't describe himself as a picky eater, but he had the money and the opportunity to have quality when he ate. Unfortunately that made him something of a lone voice among the heathens he was surrounded by. Leon had the taste and impulse control of a teenager. Detectives Carter and Fusco had years of grabbing fast food meals on-the-go by necessity. Det. Carter and John had spent years in the military. Ms. Shaw and John had spent years on missions all over the world. And John had spent years on the streets. So far Harold had not discovered one restaurant or single food item that none of the others would eat at. What one refused, another would happily finish. They humored him, or course, when he tried to elevate their palates. But Harold knew a lost cause when he saw one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Age check: do you get the reference? If you don't, check YouTube for either "Hey Mikey" or Life Cereal commercial.


	14. November

Later, when he tried to turn it into a graphic novel, it was always November on the page. No matter if he tried to go traditional samurai or Dredd-style dystopia, that lone, lean figure stood in the kind of bleak cold that comes between the trees turning pretty colors in September and October, and the first snows of mid-November and December. The time of year when the cold wind cut deeper, the rain always felt icy, and anything but the sunniest days felt bleak. Darren figured that was just the kind of guy John was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To clarify, this is from the POV of Darren, the kid from the first season episode "Wolf and Cub"


	15. Oscar

Fusco didn't like the shit HR had pulled to bust Carter back down to uniform. He loathed having to stay undercover and play nice with that filth. He'd gotten involved with them mostly by accident and blind loyalty to a stupid schmuck. Nowadays he was playing with slimeballs who'd gotten where they were with eyes wide open and a smile on their face. So he felt justified letting his Irish-Italian temper get the better of him more often.


	16. Papa

Even with Jessica, when he'd pictured their future together, he'd never quite gotten as far as children. So it wasn't like he had all these shattered dreams. But Leila had touched some tinny, previously unnoticed part of him that would have welcomed children. Thankfully that part of himself was small and underdeveloped enough to let him release that longing as he handed Leila to her grandparents, and with hardly any pain.


	17. Quebec

Kara Stanton was incredibly pissed off. Snow had given /John/ orders to "retire" her. Not only had the company lied to her about extraction, they'd sent an airstrike to China to finish the job. And worst of all, she was stuck in Quebec to regroup. Her emergency identity was Canadian, an one of her contacts had arranged to meet her there in two weeks. In Quebec. In winter. She was stuck in Canada, in winter, in the French part of the country. She hated French, the language didn't come easy to her, no matter how many classes she took. 

Someone was going to pay for this. Preferably Snow or Reese.


	18. Romeo

Zoe wasn't sure what to make of John's style with the ladies. He could be charming and flirty one minute, then he'd be pulling his Lone Ranger "ride off with a smile while they sigh" schtick. She didn't think he was really doing the celibacy thing, but she /knew/ he wouldn't start a relationship. Which left very few options for him. And while he didn't strike her as the type to pay for it, he also didn't seem like the type to be good at no-strings recreational sex, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so, this is the "if you tilt your head eighty degrees and squint" slashy moment. I really ship Finch and Reese, but given their histories, absolutely nobody they don't want to know about it would know if they actually were together.


	19. Sierra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, tough prompt. So I created a little girl named Sierra, and let her tell us about encountering John . . .

When Nana had been alive, she'd taken Sierra to church with her, taught her to say the rosary. But Nana had died and Mama had taken her to live with Eric. Though she didn't get to go to church anymore, Sierra remembered what Nana had taught her, because Eric had to be a demon. He had mean eyes, and when he drank he hit her mama. Then he started coming into Sierra's room, trying to touch her in private places, or get her to touch him. But tonight, he beat mama so bad Sierra thought she was dead. And just as Eric was reaching for her, the door burst open and Eric wasn't touching her anymore. The big man in the long, dark coat hit Eric, knocked him down, and put handcuffs on him.

Later, when the nice police lady asked what happened, Sierra told her the truth. "An angel came and made Eric stop. He said mama was hurt, but he said if I was brave it would be okay, mama would get better and we'd be safe." 

Because he'd spoken softly, and the first thing he said was "Don't be afraid, I'm here to help you." And the first thing angels in the Bible said was, "Fear not." And he'd gotten the blanket off her bed and wrapped her up snug and warm, and he'd stayed until just before the police came. She'd heard the police at the door, and he was gone. Sierra asked the police lady if they could go to church on the way to the hospital to see mama. She wanted to light a candle to thank her angel.


	20. Tango

Working with Stanton, John had always been following her lead. She took point, picked the place, the time, and how they handled their targets. Working with Finch was completely different. While Finch directed because of his command of the intelligence, he didn't always. Finch would defer to John's knowledge of tactics and violence when necessary. They traded the lead between them smoothly, as each was in his element. A graceful dance they'd fallen into rather smoothly, considering how their first meeting had gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When you look up the tango, you can find out about all sorts of variations of the tango, including queer tango. As Wikipedia defines it, queer tango is "to dance Argentine tango without regard to the traditional heteronormative roles of the dancers, and often to exchange the leader and follower roles."


	21. Uniform

John had spent most of his life in uniform. Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts when he was younger, basketball team in high school, then the army. Then came the years with the CIA and on the street, when he was in the furthest thing from uniform. Now he was working with Finch and back in uniform. 

He hadn't realized exactly how much he'd missed wearing a uniform. When he put it on, he knew what was expected of him, who he was. It was comforting, to have that anchor back.


	22. Victor

There was no sense of triumph, no satisfaction to what they found when they entered the Oregon facility. Worry over what Root would do when she learned what the Machine had done consumed him, only eclipsed by Harold's concern for how John would react to finding out that Harold had sold the laptop that been the target of John's ill-fated mission to China.

Root had shattered, her triumphant "rescue" of the Machine from its "slavery" circumvented by the Machine's liberation of its own servers by an official sleight-of-hand over the last few months. They had all walked out, as free as possible in the situation.

As they returned to New York, the sense of satisfaction slowly crept over him. The viruses had done their job, and all his machinations had delivered the optimal outcome. The greatest victory of all, though, was John's acceptance of events. Acceptance, and forgiveness.


	23. Whiskey

Everybody had their own ways of coping. Some let go of reality, some smoked weed, some smoked harder stuff, some turned to god, some turned to the bottle. Joan liked her gin, no preference for brand.

When Johnny had shown up on the street, she'd wondered if he'd hit the hard stuff. he'd seemed bound and determined to lose himself. But he'd stuck with whiskey--the cheaper the better. 

Everyone had their own ways, none really better than another.


	24. X-Ray

She'd expected there'd come a day when they called in--not a favor, precisely, but-- a request for aid. When that day came and they asked, it was a fairly simple request, nothing that really made her uncomfortable. When she examined and treated him for bruised ribs and a dislocated shoulder he'd reset before he'd even reached the ER, she put a name she knew was false on the records, and said nothing as he paid the bill with a smile. She'd always be grateful to the man for taking Benton's fate out of her hands. She had no doubt that the rapist scum had received justice. She also knew that the man who'd stopped her knew what he was talking about. The pattern of healed injuries she'd seen on his x-ray spoke volumes.


	25. Yankee

Like many others in the squad room, Fusco was checking his phone more often than a teenage girl waiting to hear from her crush. That's because he and those other unlucky schlubs were stuck on duty while the Yankees were playing an afternoon game against the Red Sox. Fusco took it as proof that Wonderboy and Glasses were either not baseball fans (bad enough) or not Yankees fans (even worse) when he got a text with an address to check out.


	26. Zulu

Elias didn't think of himself as an Arthurian figure. Much too mythical, and childish, a figure to pattern himself after. Don't get him wrong, he has great plans to unite all the crime families and make them more successful than Moretti could ever have dreamed of. But he's not the crime world's answer to King Arthur. Elias considered himself much more of a modern Shaka Zulu, smashing those who opposed him and adding the shattered fragments of their people into his organization, courting and creating alliances with those more open to negotiations. Being a history teacher had given him any number of examples to learn from, and Elias was a very good student.

**Author's Note:**

> Characters as Bear names them:  
> Alpha: Harold Finch  
> Beta: John Reese  
> Alpha female: Joss Carter  
> other female: Zoe Morgan


End file.
